How it all began

My curiosity and interest in our working cultures, what helps us to be well in the workplace and what enables us to thrive isn’t really new, I just didn’t know what all these thoughts, feelings and experiences meant.  Looking back I would describe it has a big puzzle with lots of little pieces that sometimes seemed so unconnected or didn’t make any sense, but I just had a feeling that in the pit of my stomach that something wasn’t right I just didn’t have the words to explain it. 

The seed for my interest was planted 24 years ago in my first year of working as a newly qualified nurse.  As a new nurse I had really took to heart my role as an advocate for those we cared for, it was important to me to hold that value.  I was working a night shift and I was asked by one of the senior staff members in the hospital to move a patient to make a bed for another.  The only patient eligible to move was an elderly patient with no relatives and had difficulty with her eye sight.  I thought how I would feel if it was my Grandparent, it was 3am in the morning, the corridors were cold, it would be difficult to communicate this to her.  Surely a move in the middle of the night would be frightening and so my response to the hospital manager was no.  I’m sure if you have worked in a hospital you will know that that response did not go down well and you know I get it, there are hospital targets with a lot of pressure to meet them.  I was sent on my break and when I came back the patient had been moved.  The manager was present when I returned and I asked why she had been moved and explained why I didn’t want the patient to move.  The manager told me I was being unrealistic and that I was nursing with “rose tints on”. 

It took me a long time to realise but after witnessing many similar examples it became clear that our workplaces did not support us to be the human beings we are, should be or could be and this was a health care environment.  Too often we are told “this is how it is,” but it doesn’t need to be, it has to be better if we are to create supportive environments that allow us to be well and thrive.  As I’ve become older, understood, learned and read, this culture isn’t just specific to health care but many of our working environments.